The Bruins brass were sufficiently concerned about the club’s recent lack of offense that they recalled center Ryan Spooner from AHL Providence in the hope the 21-year-old might provide a spark last night against Anaheim.

“I think we need a little bit more speed right now and we need a little bit more offense in our game,” said coach Claude Julien an hour or so before the game. “Sometimes a new face in the lineup can certainly help bring that.

“Right now what matters to me is that we find solutions to fix what we think needs a little bit of fixing to make us better.”Well, a few hours later, Julien & Co. could hardly claim that they had found the needed fixes — even if the B’s did eke out a 3-2 win in a shootout against the Ducks.

Spooner, by the way, handled himself quite well in just his fifth NHL game, showing good quickness and smarts, and earning his first big league point on an assist on Carl Soderberg’s first NHL goal.If the offense remained mighty thin, the B’s did deserve credit for finding a way, somehow, to get two points out of this one — especially since they played a tough and emotional game in Pittsburgh the night before, while the Ducks awaited this game in a Boston hotel room.

But if the night ended well for the B’s — with Jarome Iginla scoring the lone goal of the breakaway contest — it sure didn’t start that way. They were awful in the first period, outskated and outworked by a wide margin. The home team was credited with just one shot on goal, a long-range attempt by Zdeno Chara that actually looked to be wide of the net.

The B’s first shot in Period 2 also looked wide — meaning that for the first 23 minutes and 12 seconds of the game, goalie Jonas Heller did not need to be in the Anaheim net. Even with no goalie, the Ducks would have been up 1-0.

The Bruins did start playing better toward the middle of the second period — it would have been impossible to get much worse — and the remainder of the contest was competitive and gritty. And, ultimately, successful for the B’s.

“All wins are pretty, but some are prettier than others,” said center Chris Kelly. “We did a good job sticking with it. That wasn’t our best start. Sometimes you’ve got to give the other team credit. They are a good first-period team and they came out hard. But I thought we got better and better as the game went on.